Culture Contrast

A few weeks ago in our “Dance Fever” entry we talked about Mua mission and its work, bringing Catholicism to Malawi while preserving the local culture. This weekend we had a first-hand look at both sides of that equation, attending a traditionalMalawian funeral on Saturday and a Catholic baptism on Sunday.

On Saturday we traveled to a village about 30km from Lilongwe to meet with a community that impressed us during our December research trip. We arrived at the village while a funeral was in process. This funeral was special because the deceased was in the chief’s family and so there were many elaborate dances performed by the Gulu Wamkulu, a secret club of predominantly men who dance in masks and costumes. The Gulu Wamkulu are one of the best known elements of Malawian culture and some of the stories about them (such as midnight dances in graveyards) are examples of Malawian culture contrasting and sometimes conflicting with Western ideas. Before Saturday, we had seen an occasional member on the side of the road doing his dance in costume, as others have. However, it is highly unusual for visitors to be invited to watch a performance close-up.

Luckily for us, because we were the guests of the Senior Group Village Head Man (the most senior chief in the area) we were not only invited to watch the dances, but were even encouraged to take photographs (an indication of our good fortune was that the Malawians who accompanied us on the trip told us that they would never have been allowed to witness the dances had it not been for our invitation, since they had not been initiated into the society). Finally, when the men chased away the women and children for a very secret dance, our invitation ended as well. As the pictures show, the experience was something we will not forget.

On Sunday, as we usually do, we went to mass at the parish next door to St. Mary’s. Only this time the mass was quite different. The crowd was much larger and the choir was visiting from several villages away.
The reason for this was that there was a mass baptism of about 50 Malawian men and women. These men and women certainly did not choose to be baptized on a whim; some of them have spent years studying and preparing for this day. As mass progressed we had the pleasure of seeing first-hand what a mass African baptism actually looks like (unfortunately it wasn’t the best time to take out our camera). We could see in the faces of those who had just been baptized that the experience was powerful and exciting.

One interesting thought we had about this weekend was that we are fairly certain some of the dancers we saw on Saturday were baptized Christians and some of those baptized on Sunday were also members of the Gulu Wamkulu. We are certainly in no position to make any judgment call about which one is better than the other or if some combination of the two, as Mua Mission promotes, is the ideal situation. But for us, as visitors working to get a better understanding of the people so that we can deliver help more effectively, it was fascinating to see close-up the delicate balance between religion and culture.